Partners: Teaming up for Breakthroughs

Pfizer’s Hospital medicines reach patients at virtually every stage of life. The depth and breadth of our portfolio of trusted medicines and capabilities, and our presence in 160 countries, enables us to deliver value to patients throughout the world.

We are proud to provide access to our quality medicines to healthcare systems and patients in both developing and emerging markets. Pfizer’s Hospital medicines currently offers one of the industry’s largest and most diverse portfolios of anti-infectives and we’re a leader in sterile injectable manufacturing worldwide including the emerging markets.

Strategic Areas of Interest

Pfizer’s Hospital medicines reach patients at virtually every stage of life. The depth and breadth of our portfolio of trusted medicines and capabilities, and our presence in 160 countries, enables us to deliver value to patients throughout the world.

We are proud to provide access to our quality medicines to healthcare systems and patients in both developing and emerging markets. Pfizer’s Hospital medicines currently offers one of the industry’s largest and most diverse portfolios of anti-infectives and we’re a leader in sterile injectable manufacturing worldwide including the emerging markets.

Pfizer is a global leader in discovering and developing medicines for patients suffering from chronic immune diseases. Pfizer is committed to the discovery and development of novel therapeutics to help patients living with immune-inflammatory diseases. Pfizer Inflammation & Immunology is focused on discovering and developing the next generation of therapies for immune- mediated diseases. Pfizer is interested in entering into strategic relationships with innovative collaborators to develop novel and differentiated therapies for autoimmune diseases.

We are interested in establishing alliances to develop therapeutics, expand disease biology understanding, and identify biomarkers that impact three main areas:

• Rheumatology
  • Rheumatoid Arthritis
  • Systemic / Cutaneous Lupus Erythematosus
  • Lupus Nephritis
  • Scleroderma, localized and systemic
  • Systemic Sclerosis
  • Myositis
  • Sjögren's Syndrome
  • Vasculitis
  • Giant Cell Arteritis
  • Rare rheumatologic diseases
  • Spondyloarthropathies
• Gastroenterology/Hepatology
  • Inflammatory Bowel Disease
  • F4 Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis
  • Fibrosing / Stricturing Crohn’s Disease
  • Autoimmune Hepatitis
  • Refractory Celiac
  • Eosinophilic Esophagitis
  • Systemic aspects of food allergy
• Medical Dermatology
  • Atopic Dermatitis
  • Alopecia Areata
  • Vitiligo
  • Hidradenitis Suppurativa
  • Chronic Spontaneous Urticaria
  • Pruritis indications: Lichen Sclerosus, Seborrheic / Perioral Dermatitis, Chronic Hand Eczema, Prurigo Nodularis
  • Bullous Pemphigoid,
  • Pemphigus Vulgaris
• Non-GI/Hepatology Fibrotic Diseases
• Other indications with high unmet need that are related to those above

Specific areas of interest include:

• Cytokines and their signaling pathways
• Adaptive Immunity, Lymphocyte biology including Th17 lymphocytes
• Regulatory cells and Tolerance induction
• Host-microbial interactions and microbiome with an interest in epithelial barrier
• Leukocyte metabolism
• Innate Immunity and Innate Lymphoid Cell biology
• Oxidative stress modulators
• Pan anti-fibrotics
• Novel methods to target pathogenic inflammatory fibroblast populations
• Technology platforms and products to help understand patient segmentation in the disease areas of interest and develop precision medicine strategies for innovative portfolio products
• Technology platforms and products that allow for greater tissue and cell specific delivery

Not actively seeking partnering opportunities in:

• TNFα, IL-1ß targeting biologics
• B cell depleting biologics
• Corticosteroids

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) remain the leading cause of global mortality, accounting for one in every two adult deaths worldwide. The rates of CVD-related morbidity, including heart-failure, peripheral arterial disease and nephropathy are increasing as more patients survive hearts attacks, and the population ages. In addition, Metabolic Diseases, specifically Type 2 diabetes (T2D) and obesity, are major health problems that have reached epidemic proportions worldwide. Globally T2D and obesity incidence have more than doubled in the past two decades. Importantly, CVD and T2D impose large economic burdens on the individual patient and on national healthcare systems and economies. Pfizer scientists are eager to work with world-class partners who share our mission to develop novel and differentiated medicines to improve the lives of patients suffering from CVD.

Pfizer is interested in partnering to develop therapeutics, expand our understanding of disease biology, and identify biomarkers that can help us impact:

• CVD (Heart failure, hypertriglyceridemia, atherosclerosis)
• Type 2 diabetes and related disorders such as hyperinsulinemia
• Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), and liver cirrhosis
• Cachexia as a consequence of chronic illness
• Obesity and related co-morbidities
• Chronic kidney disease, diabetic kidney disease, and polycystic kidney disease
• Vascular disease

Specific areas of interest include:

• Metabolic treatments of heart failure (HFrEF, HFpEF)
• Novel therapies that target insulin sensitivity in type 2 diabetes
• Addressing obesity and eating disorders to induce and sustain weight loss
• New mechanisms and pathways for the treatment of diabetic nephropathy, chronic kidney disease or polycystic kidney disease
• Novel approaches to target vascular dysfunction

Not actively seeking partnering opportunities in:

• Anti-arrhythmics
• Stable angina treatments

Pfizer Oncology strives to advance the frontiers of cancer biology and to translate this knowledge into high-impact medicines for cancer patients. Our core areas of interest include: Tumor Cell Biology; Precision Medicine; Tumor Targeted Therapeutics; and Immuno-Oncology. In addition, our Integrative Biotechnology Group supports novel target identification and validation through functional genomics, proteomics, and other “omic” approaches.

We are interested in establishing alliances to develop therapeutics, expand disease biology understanding, and identify biomarkers that impact:

• Breast, prostate, lung, bladder, colorectal, renal, melanoma and hematologic cancers

Specific areas of interest include:

• Oncogenic drivers and signaling pathways
• Epigenetics
• Hormone signaling
• Synthetic lethality
• Selective protein degraders
• Transcriptional regulators
• Immune modulators
• Immune cell engagers
• Precision medicine
• Functional genomics
• Liquid biopsy and imaging technologies
• In vivo cell reprogramming

Immuno-Oncology

The clinical successes reported with cancer immunotherapy are reshaping the field of oncology. Pfizer is significantly advancing activity in this area by partnering to

develop cutting edge science beyond the current mainstream immune checkpoints. The IO programs at Pfizer uniquely leverage a combination of our scientific and clinical strength in immunobiology, as well as our historical expertise in developing first-in-class cancer therapies.

Pfizer’s efforts in IO include external collaborative alliances with leading academic medical centers and visionary biotech firms. Our IO efforts are driven primarily by the Cancer Immunology Discovery Unit (CID) within our La Jolla, CA-based laboratory site. Leveraging its strength in biotherapeutics, along with core expertise in immunobiology, CID has a strong record of converting validated targets into novel protein-based therapeutics and advancing molecular and cell-based IO treatments. We would like to partner in the IO space on pre-clinical and clinical-stage immunomodulatory opportunities, with an emphasis on those agents that directly engage or impact T-cell and other tumor-infiltrating immune cell populations.

We are interested in establishing alliances to develop and access:

• Novel Targets for Overcoming Tumor-associated Immune Resistance
  • Targets that impact the immune response to cancer cells; innate immune activation; and immuno-suppression
• Platform Technologies
  • Mechanisms, biomarkers, and screening approaches to identify and accelerate the most promising combination therapies
  • New modalities to promote immune responses: Bi-specific and Tri-specific antibody/cytokine platforms, nanoparticles, or novel T cell receptors (TCRs)
  • Identification of new immune-modulating targets
  • Monitoring of biomarkers of immune-responsiveness and immune-suppression within tumors
  • Novel animal models that recapitulate more faithfully human tumor-immune system interactions

Not actively seeking partnering opportunities in:

• Antisense/siRNA/shRNA therapeutics
• Reformulated cytotoxic agents

With the vision to be a leader in the development of therapeutic solutions for Rare Diseases, we have focused our business development strategy to align with the Category’s objective to identify and prioritize collaborations and partnerships to advance therapies for rare diseases where there remains high unmet need. Pfizer has adopted an innovative and collaborative approach to the development of new medicines for patients with rare diseases. We have a track record of creating innovative strategic partnerships with academic institutions, patient advocacy groups, and commercial enterprises to accelerate the development of novel therapeutics across a wide spectrum of rare diseases. Our expertise in small and large molecule therapeutics, and genetic therapies has resulted in a broad pipeline of potentially transformative medicines across four primary therapeutic areas, namely rare hematology, neurology, renal, cardiology and metabolic diseases. Therefore, we are seeking new business opportunities that span these disease indications and are not limited by molecule type.

Pfizer is interested in partnering to develop therapeutics, expanding our understanding of disease biology, and identifying biomarkers that can help us impact:

• Rare renal and cardiac diseases
• Rare endocrinology & metabolic diseases
• Rare neurologic diseases
• Rare hematologic diseases
• Genetic-based approaches (e.g., gene therapy and gene editing) in the above disease areas

Specific areas of interest include:

• Gene therapy-, gene editing-, and mRNA-based therapies including methods to minimize host immune responses and afford redosing with viral vectors
• Oral small molecule- and biologics-based approaches
• Modifiers of expanded repeat disorders
• Pharmacologic chaperones and other modifiers of protein trafficking, misfolding, or degradation that could be applied to multiple diseases

Not actively seeking partnering opportunities in:

• Dermatology
• Rare oncology
• Ex-vivo gene therapies

Vaccines are one of the greatest public health advancements of all time, resulting in the control, elimination, or near-elimination of numerous infectious diseases that were once pervasive and often fatal. Pfizer has a rich history in vaccine research and development. Over the years, we’ve played a pivotal role in eliminating or nearly eliminating deadly infectious diseases like smallpox and polio globally. We have designed novel vaccines based on new delivery systems and technologies that have resulted in vaccines to prevent bacterial infections, like those caused by S. pneumoniae and N. meningitidis.

Today, more people are benefiting from safe and efficacious vaccines to prevent infectious diseases than ever before, and vaccines provide essential health benefits at all ages, from maternal and infant populations to seniors. However, our work is not done given the many infectious diseases with high unmet medical need as well as the existence of a growing number of diseases which are potentially vaccine- preventable.

It is an exciting time in vaccine research and development, as scientific discoveries, technological advancements and regulatory paradigms are paving the way for novel vaccines. While Pfizer’s Vaccine Research and Development scientists continue to extend our leadership position in pneumococcal and meningococcal disease prevention, they are also working on vaccines against other major infectious diseases while striving to bring the benefits of vaccines into previously unexplored areas. We are at the forefront to usher in a new era of vaccine innovation, to prevent serious infectious diseases that span our life span, protecting infants through maternal immunization and infant immunization through to older adults.

The approval of the first mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines was a scientific turning point, establishing mRNA as a versatile, flexible technology. The focus and drive Pfizer exhibited in developing our COVID-19 vaccine in partnership with BioNTech produced a wealth of scientific knowledge in just one year.

Pfizer’s next wave of mRNA scientific innovation is expanding in the infectious disease arena with development programs in influenza and shingles, and we are also exploring the application of mRNA technology in other areas, including in rare genetic diseases. Our intention is to evaluate opportunities where the scientific rationale for using mRNA technology along with Pfizer’s expertise in disease is strongest, and where the potential impact on patients could be the greatest.

Pfizer Vaccines is interested in partnering opportunities in Vaccines R&D:

• Infectious disease vaccines that address a high unmet medical need and represent a breakthrough vs. standard of care
• Focus on bacterial and viral vaccines

Specific areas of interest in Vaccine Research include:

• Research tools, reagents, and materials to aid in vaccine discovery
• Novel viral and bacterial antigens (peptides, proteins, DNA, RNA, glycoconjugates) and expression systems
• Immunomodulators, adjuvants, delivery platforms, and vector systems to enhance vaccine immune responses
• Needle-free alternative delivery methods and devices

Broad platform technologies for application across multiple programs

Pfizer's Drug Safety R&D scientists employ innovative sciences, next generation technologies and multi-dimensional expertise to quantitatively evaluate patient-centric safety of all targets, therapeutic candidates, and marketed products in Pfizer’s pipeline. Our scope spans the research, discovery, development, and commercialization phases to ensure development of an efficient risk management strategy using evidence-based forward and reverse translation of multi-modal datasets generated from non-clinical models and human studies.

Our focus areas include:

Translational safety sciences to predict safe human dose: Probabilistic early screening approaches coupled with mechanistic and translational investigations to understand, predict, detect, and mitigate toxicities in humans; for example:

• Cardiovascular and vascular injury
• Liver injury, in particular immune-mediated drug-induced liver injury (DILI) and transporters
• Immunosafety concerns including both immunosuppression and immunostimulation, such as hypersensitivity, autoimmunity, complement activation and cytokine release
• Neuropathology (central and peripheral)
• Kidney toxicity – glomerular and tubular
• Ocular toxicity – retina and cornea
• Bone marrow toxicity - hematopoietic and myelopoietic
• Gastrointestinal toxicity - characterization, mechanistic and translational relevance

Development, validation, and implementation of new drug development tools: Mechanistic de-risking using new tools that include AI/ML approaches, 2D and 3D human cell-based models, microphysiological and complex in vitro systems, and omics-based translational biomarkers; for example: 

• Novel data insights and applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to predict, understand and improve safety assessment
• Quantitative systems toxicology approaches using genetic and multi-omics data sets to allow prediction of adverse events and develop a risk stratification strategy for patients
• High-resolution screening methodologies (single cell transcriptomics, high dimensional phospho and global proteomics), cell painting, single parameter and multiplex digital image analysis and omics approaches to discover, develop, and qualify multi-parametric biomarkers for translational safety monitoring
• Comparative analysis with digital imaging and digital pathology to enable forward and reverse translation between animals and humans
• Physiologically relevant complex in vitro models incorporating multiple organ systems to de-risk human toxicity concerns

Support all therapeutic areas with an end-to-end non-clinical safety assessment approach: Execute safety packages for regulatory acceptances of IND/NDA/BLA submissions for all mono- and combination-therapy approaches (interpretation and translatability); for example:

• Quantitative approaches to demonstrate safety of emerging modalities such as multifunctional antibodies; mRNA technologies (lipid nanoparticle, gene therapy, gene editing); modulators of protein homeostasis (protein degraders, molecular glues); antibody drug conjugates
• Innovative scientific approaches to assess developmental and reproductive toxicology risks and develop weight of evidence using multi-modal datasets for carcinogenicity waivers

Contribute to the biomedical ecosystem by mentoring; participating and leading of public-private partnerships, scientific and regulatory consortia, and conversations related to safety/regulatory guidance and policies

• Biologics Product & Process Development
• Biotherapeutics Discovery & Development
• Medicine Design
• Small Molecule Product & Process Development

We are focused on Precision Medicine as an approach to discovering and developing potential treatments that can deliver superior outcomes for patients, by integrating clinical and molecular data to understand the biological basis of disease, the pharmacology of our drug candidates and the appropriate patient population to treat. Precision medicine efforts have the potential to lead to better matching of drug targets with selected patient populations that may experience clinical benefit.

We are interested in establishing collaborations to develop and access:

Patient cohorts

• Large-scale datasets with high quality longitudinal clinical (e.g., electronic medical record)
• Molecular, imaging and other phenotypic data appropriately consented, preferably with broadly consented biospecimens (e.g., whole blood serum/plasma, saliva, tissue, PBMCs, stool, etc.)
• Cohorts with the potential to recall patients based on genotype or phenotype for follow up studies

Systems Biology/Pharmacology

• Databases with high quality data on treatment and disease outcomes associated with genetic, as well as molecular (metabolomic, proteomic transcriptomic, epigenetic, clinical chemistry markers) or functional measures, in particular with associated imaging data
• Databases of searchable expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs), protein quantitative trail loci (pQTLs) across tissues
• Disease biology guided combination therapy design platforms
• Systems biology approaches and proven in silico tools to evaluate pharmacological perturbation and to elucidate mechanisms of in vivo toxicity
• Mining of data for correlation and understanding of causality

Biospecimen Analysis

• High dimensional single cell analysis platforms
• 3D cell models for safety and efficacy assessment that ideally incorporate genetic diversity
• Emerging “omic” analysis (e.g., phosphoproteome, autoantibody profiling, microbiome in addition to proteomics, metabolomics)

Physiological Biomarkers

• Technologies that have the potential to add enhanced precision to pre-clinical studies
• EEG-based biomarkers

Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) resources and technologies to generate iPSCs that may be used to enable Precision Medicine strategies

• Validated cell differentiation protocols
• iPSCs derived from sub populations with specific genotypic/phenotypic data
• Technology that can create iPSCs in a rapid and reproducible fashion without insertional approaches

Biospecimen collection/stabilization technologies:

• Novel sample collection approaches that allow frequent (at home) sample collection with appropriate stabilization (e.g., dried blood spots, swabs)

Remote Patient wearable technologies:

• Novel actigraphy and other wearables that allow frequent at home collection of data regarding relevant physiological states or biomarkers

Advanced computational biology approaches/platforms:

• Integration of high-dimensional data across various platforms in combination with traditional clinical readouts for the predictive modeling of patient response or disease progression
• AI approaches to gaining disease insight, target selection and/or patient populations likely to respond to potential treatment
• Microbiome, including virome characterization

Pfizer is interested in partnering for the advancement of RNA therapeutics and the development of the next generation of RNA medicines

Novel target concepts and therapeutic strategies amenable to RNA based approaches (mRNA, circular RNA, gene editing, siRNA), in the following areas of interest:

• Cellular reprogramming:
  • Cellular reprogramming in cancer (CRC, Lung, Breast, Prostate, Renal), metabolic, autoimmune disease or fibrosis (e.g. transcription factors). Prioritized lineages include:
    • Myeloid cells (DC, macrophages, monocytes)
    • T cells: CAR-Tregs or Treg reprogramming and induction of Tregs (autoimmunity, tolerance); T cell exhaustion and CAR-T (oncology, autoimmunity, fibrosis, etc)
    • Adipocytes, muscle cells, endothelial cells
  • Tunable cytokine/interleukin expression for immune cell modulation in cancer
  • Reprogramming of Myofibroblasts in liver and lung fibrosis
• Infectious Disease Vaccines
  • Protective cell mediated response to bacterial or viral infections
  • Emerging virus threats
  • Bacterial pathogens
• Chronic Kidney Disease
• Conditions related to global health crises, e.g. obesity, cardiovascular disease, and viral diseases
• Preference given to targets not amenable to small or large molecule intervention

Technologies and Enabling Infrastructure:

• Next-gen gene-editing including gene correction/replacement
• Epigenetic editing
• Delivery technology, including tissue targeting for liver, lung, kidney, immune cell subsets, hematopoietic stem cells, central nervous system, or muscle
• Non-viral delivery for RNA and gene-editing
• Processes and linker chemistries for antibody-conjugation to LNPs and oligos
• Novel analytical methods for characterization of LNPs
• RNA engineering technologies (e.g. UTRs, IRES, circular RNA, chemical modifications, stability)

Not actively seeking partnership opportunities in:

• RNA vaccine strategies for Flu, COVID-19, RSV
• Non-coding RNA targets and modalities

Target Sciences (TS) is a genomics partner line with expertise in Human Genetics, Functional Genomics, and Computational Biology. TS is focused on Pfizer R&D in target discovery and validation of first in class targets with compelling human-based confidence in rationale.

We are interested in establishing alliances to develop and access:

• Highly characterized patient cohorts for genetics and omics studies in diseases of interest to Pfizer
  • Extreme phenotypes
  • Disease progression
  • Patient sub-types
  • Underrepresented ancestry patient cohorts
  • Specific areas of interest, in addition to Pfizer’s core disease areas, include fibrosis, chronic kidney diseases, obesity, senescence, and cellular reprogramming
• Population-based Biobanks and high-quality, longitudinal genotype - phenotype data sets, including clinical and molecular data, access to biospecimens, and the potential for patient recall
• Computational Biology approaches to understand disease drivers through the integration of human omics data (e.g. genetics, RNA-seq, proteomics, epigenomics, clinical measures)
• AI/ML approaches for novel target and biomarker discovery, patient stratification, and methods of development for multi-omics data analysis and integration
• Novel in silico or in vitro approaches to translate disease associated genetic loci into causal genes and therapeutic hypotheses
• Functional Genomics technologies to accelerate target discovery in disease-relevant biological systems

We engage with academia and other public bodies in a range of partnerships.

Contacts:

• Academic & Public Partnering

Our biotech partnerships allow us to help you bring your drug or platform to market, with a focus on:

• Licensing options
• Acquisition

Contacts:

• Robert Bagdorf

Our equity investments are active partnerships that seek to identify, support and grow good science from an early stage.

• Pfizer Ventures